Diving stats

[Flutter]

Two of my sisters were certified years ago for vacations and have perhaps 20 dives completed and both say they will probably dive no more. One asked recently if I knew the stats on what % of divers certified stop diving before 50 dives? And which divers continue to 100 dives, 200 dives, 500 and more? I see scubaboard has such classifications to check off (similar to her question) when ppl join. Are the stats available for such a question? (I’ve looked and have found % for gender, ethnic group, age, training level - but not a breakdown % for actual hours or dives completed).
When my hubs & I were certified 21 yrs ago, we were told that less than 80% of all divers went beyond 200 dives and even less have 200hrs of diving completed. Our instructor encouraged us to be among the few and to “learn from every dive.” ( I’m not sure where that figure came from). My hubs and I feel very fortunate to have remained healthy enough to still dive. When diving, we truly feel among the blessed).
If there is already a thread on this, please advise. Otherwise I am curious if there is an answer, and so is my sister who asked me (she’s a dog musher - that’s her passion).
If this should be posted elsewhere, also advise.

 

[Miyaru]

You are an active diver and registered here. Those two sisters of yours are likely not interested in a scuba forum (and never registered) when they're not scubadiving. Which means that this forum cannot provide those stats at all.

 

[KatieMac]

When my hubs & I were certified 21 yrs ago, we were told that less than 80% of all divers went beyond 200 dives and even less have 200hrs of diving completed.

I would think 80% is very very high now. Maybe this was true 21 years ago, but now it seems a lot of people get certified OW on vacations and then never do it again.

 

[boulderjohn]

but now it seems a lot of people get certified OW on vacations and then never do it again.

While instructing in Colorado, I always asked my students why they wanted to be certified. By far the most common answer was they were preparing for a coming vacation.

 

[boulderjohn]

Here is a historical note that might be helpful in understanding this situation.

Formal scuba instruction was invented in the early 1950s by the Scripps Institution for Oceanography in California. Los Angeles sent an employee, Al Tillman, to Scripps to learn how they taught it, and then they created the Los Angeles County program under his direction. They later decided they wanted to take the idea nationwide, but could not do that with taxpayer money. Tillman et. al. got independent instructors from around the country together in 1960 to create NAUI. TIllman was NAUI instructor #1. (I am telling you this to establish a baseline of information.)

In the mid 1960s, the Los Angeles program became concerned about the fact that so very many of the people they were certifying quit diving soon after their first experiences as certified divers. In an attempt to keep people diving, they decided to create a new certification. (At that time the only 2 certifications were diver and instructor.) This new certification would include dives with different kinds of experiences, in the hope that one or more of those experiences would pique diver interest and get them to keep on diving. That was the beginning of the Advanced Open Water diver certification.

NAUI was experiencing the same problem, and with their close association with the Los Angeles program, they followed suit and created the NAUI version of the Advanced Open Water certification. This was about the time that other agencies were being born, and eventually all the others joined in.

The point of this post is that diver dropout has been a major factor in scuba since the very beginning.

 

[dmaziuk]

You are an active diver and registered here. Those two sisters of yours are likely not interested in a scuba forum (and never registered) when they're not scubadiving. Which means that this forum cannot provide those stats at all.

Theoretically PADI, SSI, CMAS, etc. could do it: each knows how many people it certified, and has their ids, and also has the numbers of their affiliated dive shops. Said shops, when organizing dies typically record the agency, member id, and (self-reported) dive count of the participants. The agencies could ask them for the info.

It would be a ballpark figure, but it might be representative.

 

[Divin'Papaw]

One asked recently if I knew the stats on what % of divers certified stop diving before 50 dives? And which divers continue to 100 dives, 200 dives, 500 and more? I see scubaboard has such

I believe the percentage of certified divers who never reach 50 dives is quite high. I’d put money on it being over 90%, possibly much higher. It could be over 98%.

I run into ‘certified’ divers all the time. At work, at church, at social events. I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve run into who are actual ‘divers’ like most of us here and have logged over 50 dives.

I would also put money down on the percentage of divers who never reach 20 post-training dives being over 75%.

 

[Miyaru]

Theoretically PADI, SSI, CMAS, etc. could do it: each knows how many people it certified, and has their ids, and also has the numbers of their affiliated dive shops. Said shops, when organizing dies typically record the agency, member id, and (self-reported) dive count of the participants. The agencies could ask them for the info.

It would be a ballpark figure, but it might be representative.

That's exactly what my software product does. Divers register at dive centers with their certification, self-reported dive count and the date of their last dive. From that information, statistics can be created: through which agency the diver is certified and in which age group the diver is. For example Malta:

But this is only information about active divers. Agencies keep track of courses and certification dates, not of fun dives after certification.
One could create statistics with the amount of self-reported dives, but that still wouldn't answer the OP's question.

 

[dmaziuk]

One could create statistics with the amount of self-reported dives, but that still wouldn't answer the OP's question.

No, but if you could could get your software into all PADI-affiliated dive shops, and get all certification data from PADI, then you could run the stats OP asked for. (IRL PADI would have a better chance of getting the numbers from the shops -- exported from your software -- and doing the totals on their end.)

 

[Outbound]

I recall reading an article (perhaps on Scubanomics?) that said something about the number of active divers decreasing in recent years, but the number of new divers slightly increasing. These new divers tend to be younger than the active diver population, but are also less likely to continue diving. They see diving as just another activity to do while on vacation, and generally aren't interested in continuing with it after they return home. So, while this is a long-standing trend, it looks like it might be getting slightly worse than in decades past. Diving is increasingly becoming an "Instagram activity" for young people who want to post some cool pics on their social media accounts.

That does make me wonder if the number of DSDs is increasing.